Next year, it's likely we'll see a physics Nobel honoring CERN for discovering the Higgs -- another appropriate example of an institutional Nobel.
ITYM s/less/fewer/
Yes, but there's talk that this longstanding convention may be at least temporarily broken with next year's physics Nobel. Little more than a rumor at this point.
Translated page for those of you who don't read Norwegian.
The announcement is made at 11 am local time, but the government run media had received confirmation that the European Union will win the price this year.
A war between Germany and France is completely unimaginable, no matter how much the government in France and Germany might disagree, a war wouldn't even make sense. Yes, the Cold War also contributed to that, but European integration helped create a Europe that is not in disarray. Sure, there are heated debates, crises and arguments (as should be expected and is very much normal), but unlike in the past there is practically no danger that those arguments could turn into war.
There are many things I do not like about how the European Union is set up (most of that is historical baggage – creating the EU was a hard, long and necessarily convoluted process), but with a peace prize I can agree.
But why now? The Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to encourage. Sometimes they are a bit early with their encouragement (see Obama), but that's the general idea. This is to say yes, the European project might have flaws, but it has also been a force for good.
